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Editor of The Progressive Calls For Eric Holder to Resign Over Spying on Press, Occupy Protesters

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 22 (Opinion) - As the Obama administration faces criticism for the Justice Department's spying on journalists and the IRS targeting of right-wing organizations, newly released documents show how the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local police forces partnered with corporations to spy on Occupy protesters in 2011 and 2012. Detailed in thousands of pages of records from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies, the spying monitored the activists' online usage and led to infiltration of their meetings. One document shows an undercover officer was dispatched in Arizona to infiltrate activists organizing protests around the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the secretive group that helps corporate America propose and draft legislation for states across the country. We're joined by Matt Rothschild of The Progressive, who tackles the surveillance in his latest article, "Spying on Occupy Activists: How Cops and Homeland Security Help Wall Street."

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Society of Professional Journalists: SPJ Code of Ethics

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

spj.org - By SPJ ethics committee - May. 22 (Statement) - Seek Truth and Report It - Minimize Harm - Act Independently - Be Accountable -

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60 Minutes and the Billionaire Agenda: Part 1, “Counterinsurgency Cops”

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Richard Eskow - May. 20 (Opinion) - This Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media’s ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

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How far did PBS go to avoid offending a sponsor?

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Jane Mayer - May. 20 (News Report) - When Koch joined the boards of WGBH and WNET, it seemed to mark an ideological inroad, enabling him to exert influence over a network with a prominent news operation. Meanwhile, the member stations, by having Koch as a trustee, were inoculating themselves against charges of liberal bias, and positioning themselves to receive substantial new donations.

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Being a Democracy Hating, Corporate Power-Defending Newspaper Owner Runs Deep in the Koch Family

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Yasha Levine - May. 19 (Opinion) - There’s a rumor going around that the Koch brothers are interested in buying up the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun… And there’s a lot of speculation about what would happen if they did. Some worry, and rightly so, that the Kochs—whose combined wealth makes them the biggest billionaires on the planet—would integrate the Tribune Co. with the rest of their free-market thinktank-industrial complex, and turn its newly acquired news media property into a gigantic business propaganda machine. Half the reporters at the Los Angeles Times even took a vote saying they’d quit if the Kochs bought the paper

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Popular Resistance Is Percolating Across the Country -- Inspiring Activism That the Corporate Media Always Ignores

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers - May. 18 (News Report) - The heart of the conflict faced in the United States is the inequity of an unfair economy supported by a corrupt two party system. This week there was a very creative protest in New York City against the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico. He’s made his billions with the help of government allowing a monopoly on phone service resulting in Slim gouging the public.

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How the IRS’s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Kim Barker, Justin Elliott - May. 17 (Investigative Report) - The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

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Scandalous vs. Scandal Lust

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By CHARLES M. BLOW - May. 16 (Opinion) - I have watched in recent days as a parade of conservatives have used specific and real governmental missteps to justify their wide-ranging paranoia and irrational hostilities. “Aha!” You have to take their glee in sorrow with a grain of salt. For them th

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On Capitol Hill, Holder to face questions on AP phone records, IRS scandal

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Sean Sullivan, Rachel Weiner, Juliet Eilperin - May. 15 (News Report) - Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is set to testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday afternoon, where he is expected to be grilled by lawmakers about the Justice Department’s decision to secretly obtain journalists’ phone records and peppered with questions about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra ...

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Obama’s unfortunate scapegoat

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Alex Seitz-Wald - May. 15 (News Analysis) - Miller is a scapegoat in the most pure and classic sense. The acting commissioner was not running the IRS at the time employees improperly targeted Tea Party groups — that would be Bush-appointee Doug Shulman, who resigned as commissioner last year — and Miller’s name isn’t mentioned a single time in the Treasury Department inspector general’s report. Indeed, there is no evidence that Miller was in any way responsible, involved or even aware of the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups by underlings. He is falling on his sword for something he did not do. But why Obama made this decision is easy to understand: The political pressure to fire someone — anyone — was deafening, and the president literally didn’t have other options.

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Cascading Confessions

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By MAUREEN DOWD - May. 15 (Opinion) - Two of the hot topics trending on Twitter Tuesday were Angelina Jolie and the I.R.S. Beauty and the Beast. Jolie stunned the world with a New York Times Op-Ed article explaining why she decided to have a preventive double mastectomy once she learned that

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As China's social media takes off, Beijing's censorship campaign heats up

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - May. 15 (News Analysis) - A few well-regarded intellectuals known to be critical of the Communist Party have drawn millions of followers on China's ...

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Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark Decries Government's "Big Brother" Seizure of AP Phone Records

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 14 (News Report) - The Associated Press says the U.S. Department of Justice has secretly obtained a trove of journalists’ phone records in what its chief executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion." The Obama administration seized records for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Connecticut, and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. More than 100 reporters work in the offices. The records were from April and May of 2012

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Gov't obtains wide AP phone records in probe

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Mark Sherman - May. 13 (Special Report) - The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery.

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Anna Jarvis, the Radical Behind Mother's Day

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Steve Brodner - May. 12 (Comment) - This cartoon was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.

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Rupert Murdoch must step down as News Corporation chair – shareholders

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 09 (News) - Christian Brothers Investment Services demands action to 'dramatically revise corporate governance practices' Dissident shareholders are pressing once more for the media mogul Rupert Murdoch to step down as chairman of News Corporation . Shareholders from the US, UK and Canada filed a resolution on Tuesday, calling for News Corp to appoint an independent chairman. A similar resolution attracted strong support at the media company's annual shareholder meeting last year . The proposal was introduced by Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS), which manages $4.6bn for Catholic institutions worldwide. It is backed by the UK's Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, with assets of £115bn ($178.9bn), and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, one of Canada's largest institutional investors. In a separate resolution, Nathan Cummings Foundation, an ethical investment group, has called on News Corp to end the dual-class share structure that allows the Murdoch family to control ...

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NARM Music Biz Expo, Cannes Film Festival, Drama Desk Awards. Cine Gear Expo, are highlights in May’s Global Media and Entertainment Industry « Global News and Networking Events Covering the Media and Show Business Industry

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

actorschecklist.com - May. 07 (Special Report) - With some semblance to Austin's SxSW, Music Matters Festival features emerging and established bands from Asia/Pacific region and the world, and sets up Festival's location, Singapore as Asia Pacific’s regional hub for entertainment, digital media and technology...

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Howard Kurtz’s Belated Comeuppance: The Media Critic's Firing Comes After a Long History of Journalistic Abuses

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Perry - May. 06 (News Report) - When one looks at the mess that is modern journalism in the United States, a chief culprit has been Howard Kurtz. Yet, his downfall did not come because of his smearing of fellow journalists – like Gary Webb and Helen Thomas – but rather from a blog post that unfairly criticized basketball player Jason Collins after he revealed that he was gay.

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Inside the Collapsing Media Empire of Deceased GOP Sleaze-Peddler Andrew Breitbart

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Mark Ames, Max blumenthal - May. 05 (Special Report) - Breitbart, the adopted son of a wealthy West Los Angeles restauranteur, used his privilege to immiserate the most marginalized, impoverished, widely demonized groups of Americans. He was a faithful errand boy for rich, Scrooge McDuck tycoons like Peter Thiel, Foster Friess, and the Koch Brothers, wielding smear journalism against anyone or any interest that threatened their power — usually African-Americans or groups like ACORN, serving impoverished, neglected inner city communities.

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Islamists Demand that Bangladesh's Women Stay at Home

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Pantha Rahman Reza, Rezwan - May. 05 (News) - Members of a radical Islamist party in Bangladesh attacked female journalists on assignment as the group marched in the country's capital to demand strict Islamic law, including a ban on free mixing of the sexes. Until its demands are met, the party has promised to cut off the city of Dhaka from the rest of the country on May 5, 2013 by stationing its activists at all six entry points into the city.

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Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers. - Grist

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By John Upton - May. 02 (News Report) - Women in the developing world, many of whom work in agriculture, are vulnerable to climate change. Apparently the idea of girls being sold off into early marriage and women being pushed into prostitution is fucking hilarious.

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Drug Agency Lowers Age For Next-Day Birth Control

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Pam Belluck - Apr. 30 (News) - The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would make the most widely known morning-after pill available without a prescription to girls and women ages 15 and older, and also make the pill available on drugstore shelves, instead of keeping it locked up behind pharmacy counters.

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The Right Wing Cult Machine Exposed

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Thom Hartmann - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - a cult is a group or sect bound together by adoration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. A cult promises you redemption. It tells you that if you do what it says, and as it believes, you will be protected from the evil people that are out to get you and the rest of society. A cult purges the non-believers. And it actively tries to vilify all those who are not part of the cult

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Explaining the upper crust’s preference for austerity economics

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

seattletimes.com - By Paul Krugman - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics. Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics?

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The Great Degrader

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - I’ve been focused on economic policy lately, so I sort of missed the big push to rehabilitate Bush’s image; also, as a premature anti-Bushist who pointed out how terrible a president he was back when everyone else was praising him as a Great Leader, I’m

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